Kanpai: What Japanese Toasting Culture Really Means

Kanpai (乾杯) literally means “dry the cup” — but almost nobody in Japan drains anything when they say it. Its real job is simpler: it is the starting gun. Until someone says it, nobody at the table drinks. Once you understand that kanpai is a signal rather than a vow, every other rule around it stops feeling arbitrary.

Which raises a more interesting question than etiquette. If the toast is a coordination device, where did it come from, and is it as old as the sake in the cup? The answer is not what most guides tell you.

What does kanpai actually mean?

The word is two characters. 乾 (kan) means dry or dried out. 杯 (pai) is a drinking cup — the same character you meet in sakazuki, the flat lacquered or ceramic cup used at weddings and shrines. Put together: empty the vessel.

The instruction is inherited from Chinese, where gānbēi written with the same characters really can mean bottoms-up, and where refusing to drain the glass can register as a slight. Japanese borrowed the word and quietly dropped the obligation. In a Tokyo izakaya, kanpai is followed by a sip. Emptying your glass in one go is a separate and much more aggressive act, and it has its own name — we will come back to it.

This makes kanpai structurally different from most European toasts. Santé, salud, prost and cheers all wish something — health, or good fortune, or simply goodwill. Kanpai describes a physical action instead. It is closer to a stage direction than a blessing, and that is exactly how it functions.

Why nobody drinks before the kanpai

Here is the part that catches visitors out. Drinks arrive. They sit on the table. Condensation runs down the beer glass. Nobody touches anything, sometimes for a full two or three minutes, while someone at the head of the table — the host, or the most senior person present — says a few words. Then: kanpai. Only then does the room start drinking.

Reaching for your glass early is the one genuine misstep, and it is not about respect for the speaker so much as about what the gesture is for. The toast converts a collection of individuals who happened to arrive at different times into a single group that started at the same moment. Everything social that follows in a Japanese drinking evening — the pouring for each other, the shifting of seats, the rounds of ordering — is built on that shared starting line.

It also explains why the first round in an izakaya is so often beer. Beer arrives fast and arrives for everyone at once. Sake, poured from a bottle into small cups around a table, takes longer — which is why the sake usually appears from the second round, once the group is already synchronised.

The glass-lowering thing, and how much it matters

You may have been told that when clinking with someone senior to you, your glass rim should sit below theirs. This is real. It is also considerably less rigid than the internet suggests.

At a formal company gathering or a wedding, you will see it done, and doing it yourself reads as attentive rather than obsequious. At dinner with friends, at a standing bar, or at a table of people roughly the same age, nobody is measuring. The safest read is to watch what the person opposite you does and mirror it — which is, more or less, what Japanese people do too.

One practical note: at large formal events, glasses are often simply raised rather than clinked at all. Fifty people reaching across a banquet table is a logistical problem, so the raise substitutes for contact. Follow the room.

Is kanpai an ancient sake tradition? Not really

This is where the received wisdom breaks down, and where the story gets genuinely interesting.

Sake’s oldest ceremonial roles are not group toasts at all. They are one-to-one or one-to-the-gods: sake offered at a shrine, the three-cup exchange of san-san-kudo at a wedding, and kenshu (献酬), the practice of passing a cup back and forth between two people as a bond. None of these involve a room of people lifting vessels simultaneously on a spoken cue. The synchronised toast is a comparatively recent arrival, generally traced to nineteenth-century contact with the West.

Now the twist. In January 2013, Kyoto City brought into force the first ordinance of its kind in Japan, encouraging residents and businesses to toast with local seishu — explicitly in order to promote understanding of Japanese culture (City of Kyoto). It has no penalties and no enforcement. It simply says: consider raising sake. Other municipalities noticed. By 2020, a survey team at Ritsumeikan University counted 146 local authorities with a toast-promotion ordinance on the books — 46 for sake specifically, 80 covering local drinks and produce more broadly, 12 for shochu, and a handful for wine, plum liqueur and yuzu liqueur (Takamura, ed., 2024).

Read those two facts together and something odd emerges. A hundred and forty-six Japanese local governments have passed laws encouraging a custom that is less venerable than the breweries it is meant to protect. The Ritsumeikan researchers say so themselves: because sake’s older ceremonial uses were ritual and one-to-one, the ordinances are better understood as a new historical creation than as the preservation of something old — and they are candid that the question of what would even count as an “authentic” toast is unresolved. That is not a criticism of the ordinances. It is a reminder that traditions are things people build, sometimes deliberately, sometimes by statute, and usually more recently than we assume.

When you do not say kanpai

There is one occasion where saying kanpai would land badly: a funeral, wake or memorial gathering. There, the word is kenpai (献杯) — the same 杯 cup, but 献 means to offer or dedicate. The cup is offered to the person who has died.

The physical performance changes with it. The cup is raised only slightly, roughly to chest height rather than overhead. Glasses are not clinked. The word is said quietly, not called out. There is no applause afterwards, where a celebratory kanpai often draws some. If you find yourself at a Japanese memorial meal, listening for which of the two words is used will tell you everything about the register of the room.

Kanpai and the pressure to drink

The uncomfortable part of the subject, and the part most English-language guides skip.

Kanpai itself is benign. What has historically followed it in some settings is not: ikki (一気, “in one go”), the chanted demand that someone empty a glass without stopping, most often aimed at the youngest or newest person at the table. The consequences are measurable. In 2024, ambulance crews in the Tokyo Fire Department’s jurisdiction transported 14,190 people for acute alcohol intoxication; more of them were in their twenties than in any other age band, and 27 cases were classed as severe or worse, meaning a strong risk to life (Tokyo Fire Department). Transports peak in December, the season of year-end parties.

Japan’s health ministry published the country’s first national drinking guideline in February 2024, and it is unusually direct on this point. It names pressuring other people to drink as something to be avoided, warns that drinking should not become a vehicle for harassment, and states plainly that people without a drinking habit should not be pressed to drink at all. It also puts a number on the dangerous pattern: a single occasion involving 60 g or more of pure alcohol counts as heavy episodic drinking and should be avoided (MHLW, 2024).

Worth translating into sake. One gō — the standard 180 ml serving, at a typical 15% ABV — works out at roughly 22 g of pure alcohol, using the ministry’s own formula of volume × strength × 0.8. So that 60 g threshold is not some remote extreme. It is just under three servings in one sitting. The guideline’s separate everyday reference points, drawn from Health Japan 21, are 40 g a day for men and 20 g for women.

What is actually changing

Toasting with a soft drink is now entirely ordinary. Nobody at a decent table will comment, and at company events the non-alcoholic option is usually offered by default. The verb has effectively been decoupled from the alcohol: you raise what you have, and you say kanpai.

The data hints at a shift too, though it needs handling carefully. Japan’s National Health and Nutrition Survey for 2023 found that 4.3% of men in their twenties were drinking at levels that raise lifestyle-disease risk — the lowest figure of any adult male age group, against 23.6% for men in their forties (MHLW, 2024). That is one specific measure of heavy drinking, not a measure of whether young people drink at all, and a single survey year is not a trend. But it does not support the idea that young Japanese are the ones being poured into taxis.

The custom, in other words, is doing what customs do: keeping the useful part — a room starting together — and shedding the part that was never really about hospitality. If you want to see how the same ritual travels, the differences between how sake is served in Tokyo and New York are instructive.

How to do it, practically

• Wait. Do not touch your glass until the toast is called, however long the speech runs.
• Hold a small sake cup with both hands if it feels natural — one to hold, one supporting underneath. With a beer glass, one hand is fine.
• Say kanpai clearly, on the beat, with everyone else. Volume matters more than pronunciation.
• Make brief eye contact with the people nearest you as you clink or raise.
• Take a sip. Not the cup. A sip.
• If you are not drinking alcohol, raise whatever is in front of you and say it anyway. This is normal and requires no explanation.

If ordering the sake itself is the bit you are unsure about, that is a separate skill and a learnable one.

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Frequently asked questions

Does kanpai mean you have to empty your glass?

No. The characters literally say “dry the cup”, inherited from Chinese gānbēi, but Japanese usage dropped the obligation. A sip is correct and expected. Draining a glass on command is ikki, a distinct practice that public health bodies actively discourage.

Do you clink glasses when you say kanpai?

Usually yes, but gently, and only with people within easy reach. At large formal events glasses are commonly just raised without contact. If you are clinking with someone clearly senior to you, letting your rim sit slightly lower than theirs is a recognized courtesy — observed carefully at formal gatherings, largely ignored among friends.

What do you say instead of kanpai at a funeral?

Kenpai (献杯), meaning to offer the cup. The cup is raised only to about chest height, glasses are not clinked, and the word is spoken quietly rather than called out. Saying kanpai in that setting would strike the wrong note.

Can you say kanpai with a soft drink?

Yes, without qualification. Raising a soft drink, tea or water is completely standard, and Japan’s 2024 national drinking guideline explicitly says people who do not drink should not be pressed to. You owe nobody an explanation.

Is the sake toast an ancient Japanese tradition?

Less ancient than most assume. Sake’s older ceremonial forms — shrine offerings, the wedding san-san-kudo, the two-person cup exchange of kenshu — are not group toasts. The simultaneous raise is generally traced to nineteenth-century Western contact, which is part of why researchers describe Japan’s toast-promotion ordinances as creating a tradition rather than conserving one.

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Sources

• City of Kyoto. Ordinance on the Promotion of the Spread of Seishu (京都市清酒の普及の促進に関する条例). Japan’s first such ordinance; in force from 15 January 2013. Official page, Japanese
• Takamura, G. (ed.). Survey Report on the Effects of Toast-Promotion Ordinances: From a Questionnaire Survey of All Municipalities that Enacted Them (乾杯促進条例の効果に関する調査報告書). Ritsumeikan University, RPSPP Discussion Paper No. 57, October 2024. Counts 146 municipalities with such ordinances and discusses their historical authenticity. PDF, Japanese
• Tokyo Fire Department. Acute Alcohol Intoxication Can Be Life-Threatening (命に関わることもある「急性アルコール中毒」). Emergency transport figures for 2024: 14,190 cases, highest in the twenties age band, 27 severe or above. Official page, Japanese
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan). Guidelines on Drinking with Consideration for Health (健康に配慮した飲酒に関するガイドライン), February 2024. Pure-alcohol calculation, the 60 g heavy-episodic threshold, and the statement that pressuring others to drink should be avoided. PDF, Japanese
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan). Outline of the National Health and Nutrition Survey 2023 (令和5年国民健康・栄養調査結果の概要). Proportion drinking at levels raising lifestyle-disease risk, by sex and age group. PDF, Japanese

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Written by Dr. Sake. We take sake apart — the chemistry, the history, the label — and put it back together in plain English. For weekly diagrams, label breakdowns and brewery notes, follow @thesakeanatomy on Instagram.